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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

21CLHK9 Take-Aways

I had the pleasure of attending the 9th 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong (#21clhk) during March 8-11 at the Hong Kong Convention Center. I presented my Bling My Blogger session to around 20 educators on Saturday. As a presenter it was nice to hear someone say, "I'm going to go home and begin a blog now." If I only convince one person to begin sharing their professional practice, then I count myself successful; plus, a few other people were seriously considering user Blogger as a digital portfolio tool for students, so another win in my opinion. Enough about me!

On March 8th, there were Job-A-Like sessions offered. And although I would have loved to attend the Technology Coaches group lead by Robert Appino (@rappin01), because I know he is amazing, I really needed to join the Tech Directors group with Dr. Matt Harris (@mattharrisedd). Dr. Harris did an outstanding job facilitating a whole-day discussion. It could have been a tragically long and tedious affair, but instead it was very engaging and informative. As Dr. Harris stated, "It isn't often that Directors of EdTech get to be in a room together." We discussed a variety of topics, but the things that hit me the hardest were the topics of evaluating the IT side of the office as well as changing the culture of the IT staff of be a service based approach with accountability and incentives. In my current role, I don't really have a say in those matters, but I took away several good ideas for the future and possible ways to push our community in a new direction as we grow and change.

March 9th was a half-day session on EdTech Leadership lead by Dr. Harris. The entire session was useful, but the best take-away for me was about knowing your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. The comment that hit me the most was, "As an EdTech leader, I need to play to my strengths, but be accountable for my weaknesses." Dr. Harris took this idea further with talking about how he knows his personal and professional strengths, so he looks to hire team members that will balance his weaknesses. As a former Headmaster, I could really appreciate this perspective. Too many leaders want to run out and hire their buddies, or people just like them, but the point is to make the leadership team stronger. If everybody is the same, how do you grow? How do you see your blind spots? The team needs to have a variety of skills and abilities and they need to know those strengths and weaknesses of other team members. Gold!

My big session from Friday, March 10 was with Dr. Matthew Savage (@savageeducation [also gets the award for BEST Twitter handle of the conference, IMO]). The session was entitled -- What Lies Beneath: Data Stories from Across the Globe. I had two big take-aways from this session. The first was the amazing data that can be gathered about students using the CAT4 and PASS and the second the analogies about data that Dr. Savage used throughout the session. Those of you who have followed my blog know about how much I love good analogies, so this appealed to me for obvious reasons. He showed a photo of a man using a metal detector on a large beach and then said, "Think if we took the metal detector away, but placed flags on the beach where treasure could be found. It would be much simpler for the man to go to these flags and dig. Sure, he wouldn't find something very valuable at each flag, but something would be there none the less. That is how data works. It is like a flag on a large beach pointing to something interesting and potentially useful to us." Pure genius!

I also attended Craig Kemp's (@mrkempnz) session on Change Management & the Culture of Innovation, which provided me an opportunity to have some short but important discussions with colleagues who were new to the videos and concepts that Craig shared. Although I was familiar with the content of the presentation, it was good to be reminded that schools and professionals are on different points on a continuum and we are all there to help and support each other with learning and change. Insightful!

Rob Newberry's session "What are we really doing online?" was amazing and powerful. It involved a personal story that was intriguing that lead to the title question, which changed to a discussion about how were are living these new online lives and how we are helping students navigate that world. Although I didn't leave the session with answers, I did leave the session with some incredible questions that administrators, teachers, parents, and students are struggling to understand. Thought-provoking!

However, the best part of being back at 21CLHK after four years away was having a chance to see some old friends and meet some amazing new ones and I believe that is the real power of this conference. One major event to occur because of this synergy of 21CLHK is the first ever #isedcoach chat which will happen on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 3:00pm Seoul time and continue on the last Wednesday of the month. Look what happens when EdTech folks get together and hang out -- we build stuff! Thanks to the team that puts it all together... You know who you are! (I love the photo.) And to the boat crew, thanks for some great memories. Mad respect and deep love to you all.